I watched those two waves head down the lake towards the Fitzgerald, and I think those were the two that sent her under.. Caribou Island is part of a large glacial moraine that accumulated south of Michipicoten Island. Marie. Corrections on previous comments I feel compelled to add. It became apparent that theFitzgeraldhad indeed sunk to the bottom taking with her all 29 crewmembers, many of whom were young adults less than 25 years of age. Departing Superior about 2:30 pm, she was soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, which had departed Two Harbors, Minnesota under Captain Bernie Cooper. The LCA thinks the Fitzgerald grounded on the poorly-marked Six Fathom Shoal northwest of Caribou Island, causing fatal damage to the hull. I myself and my classmates are without a doubt able to state that is not only a prime example of media misinformation. Great respect must be accorded to the wreck site, however, which still contains the remains of crew members and is considered a gravesite. [9][10], This article is about the island in eastern Lake Superior. She never should have sailed, and could have turned back when "The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound, as a wave broke over the railing." Again, though, I have to leave that decision up to you as to whether it would be hazarding your vessel or not. Result: She then sat about nine feet lower in the water than her sisters -- from my observation of their arrivals while fishing for Perch just east of Indiana Harbor, at the southern tip of Lake Michigan. In the early afternoon of Nov. 10, the Fitzgerald had passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island, steaming toward Whitefish Bay at Superiors east end.. However, it resonates. Perhaps the most widely accepted of the several theories about the loss of the Fitzgerald is that the ship crossed Caribou Island's Six-Fathom Shoal, with water as shallow as 26 feet.. McSorley was forced to rely off reports from the United States Coast guard and the still functional radar of theAndersonto operate through the storm. The wreck is in two main sections, the bow and the stern. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish? McSorley was checking down his speed to allow the Anderson to close the distance for safety. Email him at gellison@mlive.com or follow on Twitter & Instagram. You can listen to it here at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LBkYjniTU. Although not a heavy weather vessel like a cutter, it is capable of handling larger seas than the Naugatuck, the harbor tug previously stationed at the Soo. If theFitzgeraldwere to be dived, then it would be a technical dive as it is over 200 feet. By late afternoon, the Anderson's captain was noting wind gusts up to 70 knots and waves up to 8 metres. [2], According to the available information, Caribou Island consists of a mixture of glacial sediments and Precambrian sandstone. 3:20 PM Anderson reports winds coming from the Northwest at 43 knots. It was originally discovered by sonar shortly after the sinking in 1975 and first documented by several expeditions in 1976 including one by Jean Michel Cousteau, son of famous oceanographer Jaques Cousteau. Caribou definition, any of several large, North American deer of the genus Rangifer, related to the reindeer of the Old World. The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began Nov. 9, 1975 at the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No.1 in Superior, Wisconsin, Sean Ley, a development officer at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point Light Station in Whitefish Point on the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, wrote in a blog post for the museum titled The Fateful Journey (https://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/the-fateful-journey/?fbclid=IwAR33M-6_G0X15ab73z4KkAIM3owr3GaVpRsHdaE5n_OIbSP3PzX7_FTMIGo). The bell of the ship is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum as a memorial to her lost crew. They therefore have the best genetics for surviving in this area. Marine and other experts who examined Coast Guard photos and videotape of the wreckage for the board of inquiry dismissed fracture as a cause of the wreck, based on the fact that no photo evidence shows brittle fracture separation, which is described as having straight or flat edges. [1], The island was privately held by a group of hunters and stocked with caribou in the late 1800s. Sad story. Several of the lakes are maintained by beavers and all are several feet above Lake Superior. Because the ship had no depth sounding technology, the crew had no way of knowing that incoming water was pushing the ship lower in the water until the flooding exceeded the height of the iron ore in the holds. But we were talking to him about seven and he said that everything was going fine. FAQs. In 2009, retired naval architect Raymond Ramsey, who helped design the Fitzgerald hull wrote that the maintenance history, increased cargo loading allowances and construction of the Fitzgerald made her unseaworthy the night she went down. There had to have been something happening on the deck that a mate thought they had to get control of - even if it meant putting lives in danger.. With regards to iron ore shipping on the Great Lakes, it most certainly is still taking place. (Edmund Fitzgeraldin her early years as a coal firedsteel hulled steamship. A dynamic population. This depiction shows the Edmund Fitzgerald touching bottom as she passes over the Six Fathom Shoal on the . Understandably the footage was edited out of respect for the dead and the families. Some of the most famous lyrics in Canadian music history, anchored to what would soon become the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes, first appeared as the lede of the bylined story Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month by James R. (Jim) Gaines, national affairs writer, and Jon Lowell for a Nov. 24, 1975 Detroit-based story in Newsweek magazine. Let's not forget about the structural failure of the Carl D. Bradley on Lake Michigan in 1958. This theory was advanced by the Lake Carriers Association (LCA) after the U.S. Coast Guard report and seems to be the most popular among mariners and armchair wreck investigators. The spring after the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost, the U.S. Coast Guard sent remote cameras more than 500 feet down to it. Gaines, who began is career at the Saturday Review, the storied American weekly magazine that had started out as The Saturday Review of Literature in 1924, is now a Paris-based writer, would go onto become the first editor in chief of People magazine, as well as the editor of Time magazine, and also to serve as regional editor for the Americas, and then global editor-at-large for Reuters. As originally built,Edmund Fitzgeraldwas a coal burning steamship with a Westinghouse steam turbine driving a single four bladed propeller at her rear. Gale warnings had been issued at 7 p.m. on Nov. 9, upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning of Nov. 10. So, what happened? The Coast Guard were at this time trying to locate a 16-foot boat that was overdue.. ZIP Code by City and State. Within days, the location of the wreck on the bottom of the lake was pinpointed by U.S. Navy aircraft and the following spring the Coast Guard positively identified the wreckage using underwater photography. With the catastrophic damage to the ship and the way the ship is buried in the mud and the windows blown out and the collision with the bottom is there any possibility of a rogue wave catching the floundering ship and driving it to the bottom. "It was designed to haul a certain amount and they kept getting the Coast Guard to increase the load line." It had enough force to come down on the starboard lifeboat, pushing it into the saddles with a force strong enough to damage the bottom of the lifeboat. The second large sea put green water (the powerful center of a wave) on our bridge deck! For the boating safety class Tom treated us to footage of some of the many shipwrecks that he has dove over his own career which included a full unedited version of the Jacques Cousteau expedition. There is a lot of by Anonymous - He and his officers watched the Fitzgerald pass right over the dangerous area of shallow water. A caribou hunting site, built by native people 9,000 years ago, has been discovered underneath Lake Huron. He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them. If the ship had "hogged" upon striking the. There is a look out in Pancake Bay named after the Fitz. Tom was also the hunting boating and orv safety instructor. $45.00. The last dive in 1993 indicated that zebra and cuaga muscles were begginning to grow on her metal superstructure and that rusting had gotten worse. His written report states: At this time I became very concerned about the Fitzgerald couldnt see his lights when we should have. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down The Anderson changes course to avoid Six Fathom Shoal area north of Caribou Island. Captain Woodard, who was acquainted with McSorley and had talked with him many times previously, said in testimony that he didnt recognize the voice when first they spoke and that McSorley sounded strange. None, of course, were found and only floating debris gave clues that the Fitzgerald and its crew were lost. Some theories are nonsense relating to UFOs or a Great Lakes Bermuda Triangle in the area where the ship sank. After 10:00 PM, Cooper and his crew noticed large and small pieces of floating wreckage from theFitzgeraldwhich didn't make the situation any better.By the morning of November 11, the Coast Guard had managed to arrive at the scene to assist in the search and rescue operation. what is the real truth to this? Many theorize the ship unknowingly struck the poorly marked 6 Fathom Shoal on the island's north side, but that has never been conclusively proven. Capt. Were going to try to contact those saltwater vessels and see if they cant possibly come about and possibly come back alsothings look pretty bad right now; it looks like she may have split apart at the seams like the Morrell did a few years back., Well, thats what I been thinking. 888-492-3747, Copyright 2023 | All Rights Reserved | Produced by Pro Web Marketing. Near-hurricane force winds seemed to pick up strength throughout the day while visibility was greatly reduced. The slow flooding supposedly went unnoticed by the captain and crew until it caused an imperceptible but fatal buoyancy loss and eventually sent the Fitzgerald plunging to the bottom. Marie, Michigan. The Edmund Fitzgerald was bound for Zug Island, a heavily industrialized island in River Rouge, Michigan at the mouth of the River Rouge, where it spills into the Detroit River, near Detroit, and where it was set to unload a cargo of taconite iron ore pellets before heading onto Cleveland, her home port, to wait out the winter. Water intrusion came less than 30 minutes later. While the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains shrouded in mystery, it is no mystery that ships wreck. Meantime, northwest winds built massive seas from the starboard quarter (right rear), washing powerful waves completely over the deck as the ship left the eastern lee of Caribou Island. There is a very good chance that this is what helped lead to her demise. The first official report on the wreck sparked a flood of second-guessing. One man lived to tell about what happened unlike the Fitz. By that time the Anderson had reached the safety of Whitefish Bay to the relief of all aboard. Todays captain, however, has much more accurate and immediate information than did those sailing in 1975, when the Fitzgerald was virtually blind and wallowing in huge seas and heavy winds on its way from Caribou Island to its final resting place. After enough persuasion, Cooper agreed to take theAndersonback out to sea followed by the LakerWilliam Clay Ford. Its usual route was from Superior, Wisconsin, to Toledo, Ohio, although the destination varied. FREE BOXES. However an interior lake, Deer Lake on the center East side of the island, was used as an Amphibian base with a dock and ramp built by the last private owners of the island because of the unpredictable water/wave condition of Lake Superior. Affirmative. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 4/4/2023), Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/26/2023). Enter the text you see in the image below. The wreck continues to rust and deteriorate over time despite the fresh water nature of Lake Superior. The Anderson was just approaching Michipicoten, about three miles off the West End Light. It is approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5mi) long and 2.4 kilometres (1.5mi) wide, and 1,600 acres (647ha) in area. By the way, Fitzgerald, how are you making out with your problems? asked Clark. By this point, McSorley knew his ship was in serious trouble and opted to head full steam towards the natural protection of Whitefish Bay to ride out the storm and protect his ship and crew from further damage.By 6:00 PM, the storm had worsened and its likely theFitzgeraldwas riding even lower in the water, due to much larger 35 foot high waves, heavier damage caused by the waves and an even larger amount of water in her hull the pumps seemed unable to cope with. The Anderson's captain also made statements in 1986 seemingly supportive of the rogue wave theory. I have never been able to get that shot out of my head to this day 35 years later. What if the ship is rebuilt, with more safety features? Crafts Next, EF was slated for serious repair two days later, for two known structural weaknesses. No. Heavy snow begins to fall and the Fitzgerald is lost from. And then a song. Weather conditions continued to deteriorate. Reporting to the Anderson, the Fitzs Captain Ernest McSorley revealed the list and had activated two large ballast tank pumps to control it. WHITEFISH POINT The first one flooded our boat deck. As the afternoon wore on, radio communications with the Fitzgerald concerned navigational information but no extraordinarily alarming reports were offered by Captain McSorley. Caribou is located on the North Fork Feather River, 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of Almanor. Because of a long fetch on Superior that night, the Fitzgerald and the Anderson were in an area of the lake where huge waves were indeed occurring. While conditions were bad, with winds gusting to 50 knots and seas 12 to 16 feet, both captains had often piloted their vessels in similar conditions. 7 Caribou populations naturally fluctuate on 40-70 . In fact, the Fitzgerald -- known as a workhorse ship that set numerous cargo hauling records -- was allowed by 1975 to sit a touch over 3 feet deeper in the water when laden with cargo than originally intended when the ship was launched in 1958. But the Coast Guard called Captain Cooper back at 9:00 pm: Anderson, this is Group Soo. 4:30 p.m. Fitzgerald passes 3 to 5 miles east of Caribou Island. He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them. Improvements in personal lifesaving equipment have resulted in suits to protect sailors from hypothermia in Lake Superiors cold waters. Quantity. Others overlap in some ways. Of course, the Lake Carriers Association (LCA) blamed grounding on the not-well-marked Six Fathom Shoal northwest of Caribou Island. The cause of the sinking is still a matter of much historic debate, both Ley and Sproule note. Couseau had theorized a surface break up, which sounds similar to the Merril several years later. Captain Cooper observed the Fitzgerald passing very close to the dangerous Six Fathom Shoal near Caribou Island on the east side of the lake at around 1520 on November 10. But the Arthur M. Anderson survived and the Fitzgerald did not. The Lake Carriers Association was inclined to accept that Fitzgerald passed over the Six Fathom Shoal Area as reported by Captain Cooper. it be nice if they stopped talking about White Fish Bay which is 15 (N) miles from where it went down. What was eventually found only included destroyed remains of the ships two lifeboats, life preservers and items from the ship's galleys. There's even a work of Fiction, SCP-1174, titled, and I quote, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The heavy seas overwhelmed a ship that had already lost freeboard and was listing. Looks like he was right on this one. I was a student of Tom's in 85 7th grade science at Sault jr high. Even before her demise, the Fitzgeraldwas a well known icon of the Great Lakes to those that lived along it.). Cookie Settings/Do Not Sell My Personal Information. The protective visor over the wheelhouse windows has been completely flattened down and there is a lot of similar damage throughout the superstructure of the bow, indicating theEdmund Fitzgeraldmet a very violent and catastrophic end. Perhaps the most romantic theory about the wreck of the Fitzgerald is that the ship succumbed to the forces of the Three Sisters, a Lake Superior phenomenon described as a combination of two large waves inundating the decks of a boat and a third, slightly later monster wave that boards the vessel as it struggles to shrug off the effects of the first two. The shoaling hypothesis suggests that the most probable cause of the Edmund Fitzgerald's wreckage was her shoaling or grounding in the Six Fathom Shoal northwest of Caribou Island when the crew was unable to use the Whitefish Point Light as a navigational aid. Both ships crews could feel the effects.Around 3:00 in the afternoon, both ships had passed Caribou Island, Ontario, home of the notorious Six Fathom Shoal, a sharpy rocky outcropping more than capable of tearing into the hull of a deep draft vessel in stormy weather. That would likely mean that it was at the forward end of the weather deck. This took them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula. But the ship's owners were insurance men, not mariners, who reconfigured her for even more iron ore. Captain Cooper, too, had always maintained that Captain McSorley knew his ship was compromised on the shoal, but had faith that his ship would make it to Whitefish Bay. The Anderson changes course to avoid Six Fathom Shoal area north of Caribou Island. I have a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. released a very fine and very different tempo cover of Lightfoots The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald last March 15. On this voyage,Fitzgeraldwas fully loaded with iron ore. Until 1959,Edmund Fitzgeraldheld the record for the longest ship on the Great Lakes. ZIP Code by Address. In a similar vein, Paul Hainault, a retired Michigan Tech University professor, postulated a seiche caused the ship to scrape the bottom of Superior Shoal early that morning and the weakened hull eventually gave out. Your comment will appear after being approved. Theory 2: Six-Fathom Shoal Perhaps the most widely accepted of the several theories about the loss of the Fitzgerald is that the ship crossed Caribou Island's Six-Fathom Shoal, which nestles off the north end of the island with water as shallow as 26 feet. The Fitz hull took a fatal blow on a shoal. Caribou Island and Southwest Bank Protection Area means the area enclosed by rhumb lines connecting the following coordinates, beginning on the northernmost point and proceeding clockwise: 4730.0 N, 08550.0 W 4724.2 N, 08538.5 W 4704.0 N, 08549.0 W 4705.7 N, 08559.0 W 4718.1 N, 08605.0 W. The shoal in fact may have been mis-mapped as it appeared to jut out a mile further than official maps showed, and the Fitzgerald may have hit it in this one-mile stretch. These records are part of the Records of Bureau of the Census, Record Group (RG) 29. The following May, 1976, Woodrush was again on the scene to conduct a third sidescan sonar survey. Cooper asked McSorley how they were doing. [7], These reefs are not coral reefs. Officers and candidates in navigation classes and manufacturer schools receive up-to-the-minute training in using the latest equipment and in interpreting information that equipment provides to keep their ships out of harms way. The flooding of the cargo hold took place through ineffective hatch closures as boarding seas rolled along the spar deck.. Regis, R.S., Patterson, C.J., Wattrus, N., and Rausch, D., 2003. With mounting apprehension, Captain Cooper called the Coast Guard once again, about 8:00 pm, and firmly expressed his concern for the welfare of the Fitzgerald. The Anderson was struck by large waves which then travelled in the direction of the Edmond Fitzgerald. The comment that this industry stopped completely are false. All rights reserved (About Us). His assumption is obviously shared by others in the maritime industry, but changes instituted after the loss of the Fitzgerald are meant to help to prevent some perceived causes of the wreck. Also, a larger, more powerful tug, the Katmai Bay, is now stationed at Sault Ste. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. The interior is low scrub and bog with small lakes, Little Italy, Hambone, and Deer Lake among many unnamed ones. Captains challenge high waves with he bow, not the stern. It's still not completely agreed upon whether the Fitzgerald broke in half on the surface or underwater. Almost none of the bodies including that of Captain McSorley were ever found. Sault Ste Marie, MI 49783 She was already moving slow and was listing as well. At the time of the foundering, there was no requirement for depth-finding instruments on commercial vessels. McSorely had also ordered the pumps to be turned on in order to keep the ingress of water out of the cargo hold.By 4:10 PM, the list had not gotten any better and theFitzgeraldwas still taking on water, effectively sinking. Cooper later said he watched the Edmund Fitzgerald pass far too close to Six Fathom Shoal to the north of Caribou Island. He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald lies at the bottom of the southeastern portion of Lake Superior in 530 feet of water. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. Captain McSorley told Woodard that the ship has a bad list, implying that it had gotten worse since his earlier report to Captain Cooper. Paradise, MI 49768 Furthermore, any chance of using the wreck itself as a means of understanding what happened is next to impossible as the Canadian government has banned all diving operations period to the wreck since the recovery of theFitzgerald'sbell in 1993. it is likely that the world may never know the true ending of theEdmund Fitzgerald. Grew up learning about this. The island was acquired completely by the Roys A. Ellis family in the 1960s and was transferred to the Mellon Conservancy Trust of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in the early 1980s to never be developed. At the time of her launch in 1958, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest freighter on the Great Lakes. Photo Credit: Greenmars (Wikimedia Commons: Link) Instead, the LCA theorized that the lost freighter had stumbled over the Six-Fathom Shoal at the north end of Caribou Island, sustaining damage that would prove to be fatal to the ship. In the Duluth News-Tribune, another former crew member, Jim Woodard, claims the Fitzgerald was a "wet" ship. There is no conspiracy or disinformation campaign on that fact. "He and his officers watched the Fitzgerald pass right over the dangerous area of shallow water," Ley wrote. Our Specialties. As the afternoon dragged on, the storm worsened. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was released as a 7-inch 45 rpm A-side single in August 1976, taken from Lightfoots album Summertime Dream released that July. Not long after the search ended, years of arguments and disagreements over what could have caused theEdmund Fitzgeraldto sink have clouded up any hope of truly understanding what occurred the night of November 10, 1975 as the shipping companies, government agencies and sea fairers of the Great Lakes all have different theories and opinions that do not match. Antlers of males weigh an average of 17 pounds and can reach 29 pounds! The same problems were reported aboard theHomer. Cooper started to fear the worst and contacted the Coast Guard alerting them to theFtizgerald'sdisappearance. This theory was supported by a 1976 Canadian hydrographic survey, which disclosed that an unknown shoal ran a mile further east of Six Fathom Shoal than shown on the Canadian charts. One winter, in the 1920s, the caribou walked off the island when the lake froze over. Since then, there have been about a half dozen dives to the wreck using deep-diving equipment. The misinformation that has been spread by the media then and now is a great example of how clueless the general public is going to continue to be unless they stand up for a full disclosure of information and laws that regulate punish and fine the profiteers of misinformation. In the early afternoon of November 10, the Fitzgerald had passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island. A 2010 television episode of Dive Detectives simulated the effect of a 56-foot wave on a scale model of the Fitzgerald. McSorley replied, We are holding our own. A few minutes later, the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar screen for the last time, sinking without giving a distress signal. For the island near Thunder Bay, see, Caribou Island (near Michipicoten Island), Caribou Island near the international border. On April 15, 1977 the U.S. Coast Guard released its official report on Subject: S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, official number 277437, sinking in Lake Superior on 10 November 1975 with loss of life. While the Coast Guard said the cause of the sinking could not be conclusively determined, it maintained that the most probable cause of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was the loss of buoyancy and stability resulting from massive flooding of the cargo hold. Bernie Cooper. Perhaps the most widely accepted of the several theories about the loss of the Fitzgerald is that the ship crossed Caribou Islands Six-Fathom Shoal, which nestles off the north end of the island with water as shallow as 26 feet. May god rest the souls of the 29 men who perished that fateful night, The iron ore freighter is only about 9 nautical miles from Pancake Bay off highway #17 Ontario Canada, it sits in Canadain waters. Forty-four years ago today on Nov. 10, 1975, 18 kilometres off Coppermine Point, and 60 kilometres north of Sault Ste Marie, Ont., the 222-metre iron ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, with a crew of 29 aboard, sank. A small three room cabin was built on the east shore of Lake Superior adjacent to Deer Lake and the Amphibian base.
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